The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Seafood sensation Is this the most exciting new hip hot spot for Glasgow’s glitterati?
THE word “beautiful” twangs straight out at us from the breezy, and presumably Australian, waiter as we nod yes-thanks to the plates being cleared. There’s another “byoo-ti-ful”, almost to himself this time. And with it, he deftly scoops up what remains of the BBQ Gigha Halibut (nothing), the Butter Poached Cod (ditto), the Charred Broccoli and Lemon Yoghurt (only the faintest smear) and then the Koffman Fries (ordered without the £3 extra spicy mayo) and zooms off under that illuminated exit sign and down those stairs.
Hard not to smile at the sheer chutzpah of it all: that jazzy bit from the Crusaders’ Street Life oozing thickly from the sound system, the place throbbing with the chatter of A Friday Night In Glasgow’s West End, many of the city’s glitterati crammed in here to see what happens when the team behind a Michelin-starred restaurant touch base with the common people. In douce Hyndland too. Woohoo.
By the time we rumbled up for our
9.30pm booking, climbed the stairs from the not-sure-that-will-work bar at the front door, padded past the full tables in the way too dark bit to our table at the way too bright bit, the place was already in full swing.
Hot sauce Pacific oysters (£36 for 12) flying here and there; at least two platters of that whole monkfish tail for two on the move, ooft, fifty bangers a go; and some of those chunky all-round halibut fish suppers on tables.
This is still the first week of full-fat paying customers like me after, I’ve heard anyway, a week or so of the inevitable soft launch. Half-price, hand-picked diners and perhaps even a few freebies, who’ve been doing their job, banging that drum, spreading that gospel.
But even the maitre d’ from Cail Bruich, who wanders over, admits there’s only so many times you can enjoy your mum telling you, “it’s really great” before you realise you still have to see what the paying public think.
Well…I’m the paying public. And I can tell you this: some of us will whisper on the way out that the monkfish tail was underwhelming at that price. Others, who I’ll bump into before this is written, will reflect that after whooping it up they were sobered by the size of their drink bills.
What do I think? At first? Baffled.
Take the Mackerel Tataki, a jewel of a dish; geometrically perfect, super-fresh fillets tweezered right up to the junction where food meets art – boom. Tiny balls of preserved turnip, ginger ponzu, purple shiso. Lovely.
Then a really delicious sweetly-savoury surge of flavours, right out the Michelin micro-magic playbook. Followed by? Wham. Weirdo moment alert. What looks like a plate of KFC chicken. With prawn crackers. And eek, fins. They’re battered too. It’s kingfish apparently, on the bone, moist white meat turning out to be much, much better than its Hammer Horror appearance.
We have smoked olives, too smokey for Debs but I eat them all. A little cocktail stick Gilda with mackerel appears, I enjoy it but you can’t improve a classic, and now Tater Tots. Uh?
Crunchy, gooey inside, salty and good, sprinkled with vinegar, presumably so you don’t confuse them with, ooh, Farmfoods.
I don’t order the scallops (two I’m later told) at £19, but that BBQ Halibut brings us back to familiar ground.
It’s charred almost black, yet still seductively sweet; a fabulous porky glaze, bacon chunks, peas, then mouthfuls of the whitest, purest Scottishest fish.
No complaints on the poached cod either,
surprisingly good Jersey Royals (In early April too), faintly lemony undertones. At £19, a bargain really.
When dessert arrives, it looks like they’ve reinvented the Carrs Water Biscuit with Philadelphia but it’s actually an oozy, creamy, crackling mille-feuille fruit tang thang.
Shucks then? It’s seafood. It’s Glasgow’s West End. There’s Michelin hints. It was never, ever going to be cheap. But it might turn out to be a winner. Aw, shucks.